Nancy Archuleta is vice president of mortgage lending at Melbourne Financial, a division of First New Mexico Bank of Silver City, and current president of the New Mexico Association of Mortgage Professionals (NMAMP). National Mortgage Professional Magazine spoke with her regarding her work within her state’s trade association and her local mortgage market.
How and why did you get involved in your association? And can you share the track within your association that led to the leadership role?
My dad was co-founder of the association 22 years ago, so I have been a member since day one. I was statewide president back in 2003, and was asked to rejoin the board five years ago. I was later asked to move into the leadership position again. I felt it was time to get back in and make a difference. So much has changed since I was last president in 2003 … those were better times!
Why do you feel members of the mortgage profession in your state should join NMAMP?
A board member came to me at the beginning of last year and posed that question. “Why are we an organization? What is our purpose?” I re-read our mission statement and then looked back at what the organization morphed into over the years. We turned into a legislative function during the crisis and were very successful in lobbying. Now we’ve become more of an educational organization—we have progressed into whatever has been needed for our members.
Among our current activities, we provide community services—a charity golf tournament, volunteering with the Road Runner Food Services and Habitat for Humanity—and we’ve held a rural housing education event and co-hosted a function with the New Mexico Mortgage Lenders Association that had Rob Chrisman as a speaker. We’ve hosted numerous continuing education classes. New Mexico is a large geographic state, and we’ve educated 160 licensed loan officers for continuing education and 20 new prospective loan officers for pre-licensure requirements. And we also conducted TRID training.
What role does your association play in the state legislative and regulatory environment? Are there any items on the current agenda you would like to highlight?
We had our short legislative session this year—nothing really impacted our profession, just mainly the lawmakers doing budgetary legislation. We reach out constantly to our regulators and invite them to attend events at least once a year.
What do you see as your most significant accomplishments with the association?
The education aspect of the association is what I am most proud of. We are a small populated state and we reach out to every region and offer live continuing education classes. Last year, we had 23 different education sessions. We also reached out the New Mexico Mortgage Lenders Association and had a joint luncheon. We were all invited last year to their black tie dinner for the Mortgage Lender of the Year Award–and I won!
As New Mexico’s state affiliate of NAMB, what do you feel that adds to your association and towards the overall agenda for the mortgage profession nationwide?
We know the impact of having strength in numbers. When there is a call for action, we are definitely on board. I send a personal e-mail asking members to participate. We haven’t had a representative at the national for a while, but I attended last October representing the state.
I’ll be honest–we’ve reached out the NAMB to get advice on how to get members more excited and involved. In the early 2000s, we’d have our convention and the national president came to our event. Today, though, we have a hard time getting anyone from national to come to our events and participate.
In your opinion, what can be done to bring more young people into mortgage careers?
There are high barriers to entry of this profession at this point. It is harder due to of licensure requirements, but those are needed.
I’m working on an executive MBA at the University of New Mexico. They recently had a career event and we had an exhibitor booth there. Nearly 30 people came up and asked us about careers in the mortgage industry and they wanted to be added to our mailing list. We’re trying to do job fair later in the year. This is a word-of-mouth business. A lot of people got in through family or friends.
How would you define your state's housing market?
It is starting to pick up a little bit. We are seeing more new construction. It is moving along, and making low steps on the road to recovery.
Phil Hall is managing editor of National Mortgage Professional Magazine. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
